Verdict doesn't end racism debates

All men may be created equal, but justice is a social and political construct. As such, the non-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case is less a revelation and more a confirmation of the continued injustice blacks — particularly the black male — face in this society.

That a black teenager today can be stalked, confronted and killed by an assailant who is allowed to walk free tells me that not much has changed since the days of Jim Crow, when black males were routinely lynched, with impunity.

Spare me your howls of protest to the contrary. I will not be moved.

Yes, the lynch mobs no longer wear white hoods and burn crosses. Such overt acts of racism and intimidation are no longer politically correct. Today the dehumanization is more subtle, more sophisticated.

Outdated politicians like Newt Gingrich practice racism by preying on people's fear, like when he suggested that those protesting the Zimmerman verdict "were prepared to basically be a lynch mob."

Of course, the verdict did not unleash any lynch mobs, and the plain truth is that black people and their civil rights supporters are not the ones known for forming lynch mobs.

They are the ones, generally, who get lynched.

Mothers of black boys know this too well. President Obama should too, but when he told us in the wake of the verdict that "we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken," he underscored how difficult it has become for politicians to talk about race in this country.

Why should we accept that our "nation of laws" allows an individual, based on unfounded and even racist suspicions, to kill a black teenager — and then successfully claim self-defense?

How can a prosecutory process, one in which the state did not make an arrest until the world had expressed outrage, and did not raise the issue of race as a legitimate factor in Trayvon's death, be a comfort to anyone who believes in a fair judicial system?

Why should we celebrate a "nation of laws" that has 1 in every 10 black men in prison or jail on any given day, and has people of color making up two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses?

I wish that the president, instead of having beer summits to soothe racial tensions, would tell it like it is: That blacks face a high level of injustice in American society, but that this injustice is not their biggest problem.

While it is true that the measure of a society is how it treats its people, the measure of a man is not how he is treated by society. It is how he lives.

And if we are to save young black men, we have to tell them that rather than giving in, they should arm themselves with the cultural, educational, social and political tools to outfox and neutralize this system that is such a threat to their survival.

If we are to save young black men, we have to make them wise not only to the unjust nature of the system, but to what "giving in" to that injustice means?

You have to tell them that "giving in" is to continue to court behaviors that have contributed to more than half the nation's homicide victims being African-American, though blacks make up only 13 percent of the population; behaviors that have contributed to black victims of homicide most likely being male between the ages of 17 and 29; and to black victims being killed by blacks 94 percent of the time.

Yes, the system is deadly unjust, as the Zimmerman case has underscored. But the real tragedy, as the courts and politicians mount increasing attacks on decades of civil rights gains, is that black males are not being adequately equipped to survive this injustice.